[Normille]

I posted this in another thread on the same subject:

Not exactly related but: a couple of weeks ago I suddenly had my account 'restricted' on eBay and told I could no longer sell or receive payment for anything I'd sold until I uploaded a load of personal ID documents [passport / driving licence, etc] to confirm my identity. This, after I'd been buying and selling on eBay for 19+ years. Browsing their 'community' forum, it became clear that eBay have done this to loads of people recently, including many who had been members even longer than me. What disgusted me even more than this obnoxious privacy invasion was the number of people on the forum who'd actually sent eBay all the required documentation instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.

Luckily I had no uncleared payments in my account. So I've just stopped using eBay. It's just a pity there's no viable alternative. Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to help rein in the jaw-dropping arrogance of these mega-corporations.

EDIT:

  > The summary execution with no explanation and no escalation path and no appeal is not endearing

Agreed. I've had this happen to me before with Twitter as well. Got 3 accounts suddenly suspended for no reason. Boring long story but, after about 6 months they re-instated them with nothing more than a "Whoops! We made a mistake".

What makes these 'summary executions' [I like that description!] infinitely more annoying is that there's no way to enter into any kind of a dialogue about it. If you receive an email from eBay, telling you you've been suspended, it'll come from a no-reply address and good luck actually finding any way to contact them through their website. It just sends you round and round in circles before eventually dumping you onto their 'Community' forum, which is basically just a load of other pissed off users, shouting into the void.

I know the old argument goes "Their playground. Their rules" and, in general, I agree with that. But, with these huge corporations which have a virtual monopoly on certain arenas of internet activity, there ought to be some safeguards in place to protect users against arbitrary [and often unfounded] account suspensions. This kind of thing could literally bankrupt someone's business, if they relied heavily on eBay sales.

[bovermyer]

Yeah... my eBay account is very old (maybe 1998 vintage?), and I almost never use it anymore.

But I have a fondness for out of print, obscure tabletop RPGs, and eBay is probably the only market I know of for that, outside of knowing a guy who knows a guy.

Losing access to eBay would be annoying. Not world-ending, because perspective. But annoying.

[sebastien_b]

> until I uploaded a load of personal ID documents [passport / driving licence, etc] to confirm my identity.

I don't use anything that I'm totally dependant on, so this hasn't been a problem for me (getting an account closed - might have happened with Facebook, maybe), but your post made me think of what I'd do with such a request:

First, I'd say something like "Well, since you're asking for *very* personal and confidential info, first I will need you to confirm *your* identity by you sending me [unredacted ID card|License|Passport] as well as proof of employment such as [Complete unredacted paystub|Complete unredacted employment contract] to ensure you really are who you say you are before proceeding".

To which they would invariably reply "Well we can't do that because it would violate the privacy of our employees (oh, the irony!), but rest assured we will keep the info you provide strictly confidential, blah blah blah".

At that point I'd fire back "Seriously?!??" along with samples of past leaks/privacy violations from that company, along with a blurb about how I can't talk about this request anymore since I'm now in the process of forwarding this to my local Attorney General (or "on the advice of my council"), etc.

[_jal]

I also had a very old account, and sold things infrequently.

Went to sell something last year, and they immediately wanted a pile of personal information and bank access that I'm simply not going to give them or anyone like them.

And that's how I stopped using Ebay after 20 years. Not like there aren't other places to sell things.